


Equivalence

by rei_c



Series: Fundamental Image 'verse [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-19
Updated: 2006-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forced to return to Palo Alto, will Sam survive a brush with his past that he never expected?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arithmetic

**Author's Note:**

> S1 spoilers, all the way through. Run-on sentences. Out-of-context use of the seven liberal arts ( _trivium_ plus _quadrivium_ ). Any and all errors relative to established SPN-canon, the Bay Area, and/or anything else spoken of herein are mine and mine alone.

“Fucking hate rats,” Dean mutters, brushing off the back of his neck and looking at the building them, Sam following his gaze. The abandoned orphanage they’re walking out of looks creepy even in the daylight, but it isn’t haunted by a pack of insane child-spirits anymore, which Sam thinks more than makes up for it. He smiles, turning away, and says, “There were only a few, Dean, and remember,” and Dean cuts him off. “If you say that they’re more afraid of me than I am of them, I _will_ make you regret it,” making Sam laugh. 

That’s probably what makes Dean grin and resume walking towards the Impala. Sam hasn’t really laughed, nor even truly smiled all the way up to his eyes, since they left Arizona and came east. It hasn’t been a matter of finding out how Dean and he fit together now, though that’s been something they’ve dealt with almost every day. That’s the easy part, because Dean’s there going through it with him, suffering through this insanely careful dance that Sam created thanks to his own stupid stubbornness. Sam gets that, he really does, and gets that Dean’s forgiven him, still loves him and wants him around. 

Dean is the reason that Sam can’t stop thinking about what the shaman said, what they talked about through long nights when Dean was out doing God knows what with God knows whom. It’s been a month, he needs to tell Dean but he can’t, and if Dean hasn’t said anything yet, he will soon. Sam’s been itchy this week, jumpy, the way he feels before a vision or if there’s magic working around him, and he’s tried everything he can think of to get it to stop, but it won’t. He can’t concentrate on the research, he’s too twitchy to hunt, and only Dean’s reflexes saved him from a nasty concussion or worse when the last girl-spirit here threw a desk at him. 

The smile falls off Sam’s face as he thinks and rubs his chest, and the moment of peace disappears all too quickly, the edgy awareness of ‘other’ and ‘magic’ flaring up inside of his head. He manages to make it into the Impala before he clutches at his hair, bends over, and the throbbing passes after a few seconds. Dean’s crouched next to him when he opens his eyes and Sam’s lips quirk as he realises that he’s been caught and can’t deny anything anymore. Sam nods and Dean’s lips flatten for a moment before he stands and makes his way to the driver’s side. When the car’s in gear and pulling away from the orphanage, Dean says, “Dinner, then talk, or order in?” Sam shrugs and puts on sunglasses, the sunlight painful, saying, “Either or. Doesn’t matter to me.”

\--

Dean compromises between good food and privacy, getting some meals to go at the local diner. The smell fills the Impala as he drives back to the motel, the boxes warming up the top of Sam’s legs. They go inside and Sam sets the containers of food on the table while Dean salts the room, and then Sam traces out runes and wards on the walls as Dean unwraps plastic forks and opens the boxes, taking the burger and fries for himself and pushing the chicken and salad across the table for Sam. A dull, insistent throb in the back of his skull makes Sam’s stomach roil and he nibbles at the warm lettuce until Dean sighs, exasperated. 

“Talk,” Dean orders and Sam’s eyes flick up before going back down to the salad, slices of red onions and carrots swirling throughout the lettuce and in his vision. “Something’s going to happen,” he says, then rubs his eyes and says, “Not to us, I don’t think. I’m itchy,” and ignores Dean muttering about crabs. “How long?” Dean asks, and Sam says, “It’s been getting worse. I’m not sure when it started. A week ago?” as he tears a piece of lettuce apart. “You called anyone?” and Sam’s fingers still, holding the lettuce. Dean groans, letting the fry fall out of his fingers, and leans back, looking at Sam with something like disbelief. “You haven’t. Sam, dude, I know you’re trying to get used to this by yourself, but _call someone_ ,” Dean says, and it’s a measure of how stupid Sam feels that he nods and pulls the phone out from his pocket. Maybe he’s been thinking about everything too hard. 

With Dean looking on, Sam presses the speed-dial for Missouri and sighs in relief when she answers, “Sam Winchester, if you’re counting on your brother to help you see sense, you’re in more trouble than I thought.” Sam smiles, says, “Hello to you as well. We’re fine, thanks for asking.” Missouri says, “Jeannie thinks its coming from Palo Alto,” and Sam sits up, says, “What is?” before Missouri goes on. “Sam, you have to get there. You’ve been feeling it longer than we have. Whoever this is, it's someone you resonate with.” Sam's teeth are on edge—he remembers the lessons about resonance, about psychics whose gifts are closer attuned, about power levels and he says, very slowly, “This is the black spot on the plane? A new psychic? In Palo Alto” and now Dean’s watching him, intent, a frown marring Dean’s forehead. Sam’s never told Dean about the changes in the psychic plane, the way one spot’s been glowing a deeper and richer black in the twilight, and Missouri says, “You need to talk to your brother, Sam. Do it on the way to Palo Alto.” Sam pinches the bridge of his nose and grimaces. “How soon do I have to be there?”

There’s silence for a moment once he hangs up, the sound of a passing car rousing Sam from his thoughts. “Palo Alto, huh?” Dean asks, and Sam hears the underlying worry and distaste, feels about the same, though his is mixed in with a generous heap of trepidation. He hasn’t been back to California, much less the Bay area, since he left with Dean, after Jess, and going back hasn’t exactly been a priority. Sam looks up at Dean and knows he doesn’t sound remotely okay with this as he says, “Yeah. Within the week.” Dean nods, but doesn’t move except to say, “We don’t have to go,” after a moment of studying Sam, who gives Dean a half-smile. “We really do. Missouri said that what I’ve been feeling is a new psychic, someone whose gifts are complementary or similar to mine, and who’s just awakening now.” He sees the moment Dean gets it, remembers what Sam’s had been like, his power bursting out in two days and leaving him numb and overwhelmed. Dean smiles, then, and it might be forced but he sounds amazingly casual as he says, “So you get to be Yoda this time?” and Sam sputters before shaking his head, smile small but genuine.

\--

Palo Alto is literally on the other side of the country, a continent away from middle Kentucky, so they leave early the next morning and drive all day and half the night, switching off between Zeppelin, Metallica, and Dean trying to guess what this new psychic will end up being like. They stop for some sleep after Dean says, “Eighty, bald, with no teeth and the ability to drain the fun out of a party in two seconds flat.” Sam mutters something under his breath about showing Dean how to drain fun from anything, and Dean laughs, pulls over at the next motel they see. 

The room gets the usual treatment, salt, runes, and wards, and, like every other night since Tucson, Sam unpacks the dream-catcher and hangs it above his bed. It won’t stop the visions, won’t stop the fire, but it holds back the nightmares about so many things that leave him awake, soaked in sweat and hyperventilating, leave everything else in the room floating near the ceiling. Dean watches him pin the dream-catcher, still glowing to Sam’s eyes with the vividness of a powerful charm, and turns on the television, collapsing onto the bed closest to the door, asking, “How long d’you think you’ll need that, Sam?” Sam shrugs and goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, and falls asleep on his bed to the sound of Dean rinsing, brushing, spitting, the running of the water through creaky pipes. 

\--

Fire flares in Sam’s dream, a fire that isn’t really a dream because it’s part of him, a fire that can’t get caught in a dream-catcher because this is home, comfort, security, nothing to be scared about. It warms his bones, soothes his mind, washes through him and lulls him deeper into sleep, still conscious of fire and sleep but open and waiting. Flames swirl and undulate, lick at his skin, tickle with heat and touch, and Sam watches as the fire purrs around him and then another person, someone Sam thinks he should recognise but doesn’t. An outline, rough and smoky, nothing more, but he sends the fire out to comfort and when he wakes, the itch under his muscles has quieted to humming. 

Dean’s still asleep, stretched out on top of the covers of his bed with one hand under his pillow, and Sam grins, seeing it, as he gets up, puts on yesterday’s clothes, and leaves. He goes out in search of food and better coffee than the instant packets on their little room’s sketchy-looking table, thinking that they passed both a McDonald’s and a small-town coffee-shop last night when they drove through. Sam finds both and sits at McDonald’s for a while, reading a local paper and nursing a coffee until enough time’s passed and a couple of the old guys sitting at the other end with the sausage biscuits are getting curious about him. He gets breakfast for Dean to go, and stops at the coffee place for a couple banana nut muffins and better coffee, the strong Colombian stuff that’ll wake Dean up faster than the promise of blowing things up. 

Sam lets himself into their room, stepping over the line of salt and locking the door behind him. He crosses the room and picks up his pillow, chucking it at Dean’s head and snorting when Dean bats at the air and emerges from under his blankets with a bleary-eyed look and hair that’s sticking straight up. “I picked up breakfast,” Sam says, and hands Dean a cup of coffee, watching with amused fondness as Dean inhales the steam first, then sips as if he’s holding the Holy Grail. “I'm gonna take a shower, leave you two alone,” and he gets the bathroom door closed before the pillow flies across the room, thumping where it hits the door.


	2. Grammar

They’re halfway through Colorado before Dean says, “So, little brother. I’m going to ask you something and feel free to tell me to fuck off,” adding under his breath but meant to be heard, “Not that you ever have a problem doing that,” then asks, “You sure you’re ready for this?” Sam doesn’t know what he was expecting but he doesn’t think that was it, so he lets out a shaky little sigh of relief. “I don’t really have a choice, Dean,” Sam says, and he’s only halfway through the sentence before Dean’s shaking his head, though he waits until Sam’s done to say anything. “You do, Sam. If you’re not up to it, I’ll turn the car around and we’ll hide out in Jersey, see if we can’t track down a devil or something.” 

Sam’s lips quirk in the imitation of a smile, looking out of the window. “Dean, I don’t have a choice. What I went through, what _we_ went through, when the power broke, if I can save someone else from having to go through that, I have to.” Dean look forward, eyes on the road, and eventually says, “Yeah, okay. You have any idea who this person is or how we find them?” and that’s an easy question to answer: “No clue.” Dean goes off on a rant for the next half hour about goddamn psychics, and hearing it makes Sam’s stomach settle, makes Sam’s muscles loosen. A month ago, he would’ve taken this as Dean being freaked out about what’s happening to him, but now, _knowing_ Dean, Sam relaxes and shakes his head, looks out of the window and watches crops fly by while Dean rambles on. 

\--

They stop earlier this time; Sam’s legs are cramping up, it’s raining, and he has a headache. He’s not sure if it’s from his gift, the new psychic, or stress at the thought of going back to Palo Alto, but he can’t sit in the car much longer and he wants to try something. He’s talked it over with Dean, and when they drove through Denver earlier, Sam refilled his bottle of lavender oil and picked up a few things at one of the New Age-type stores that was actually run by a woman who knew what she was doing. She’d had a rune-covered palm and a glyph tattooed on the inside of her wrist, both done in green, and she’d nodded when Sam laid everything he was buying down, to pay. “Wondered if you’d be passing through here,” she had murmured while Dean was checking out the werewolves’ claws on sale next to yellow pillar candles. “You’ll help her,” and she’d bagged Sam’s things up without accepting payment.

Now, in another generic, cookie-cutter, salted motel room, Sam tilts the bag and lets everything fall out onto the table. Bottles and candles and baggies tumble out, and Sam cocks his head, frowning as he rifles through everything. “What’s wrong?” Dean asks, eyes lingering on the black candle and plastic baggie filled with onyx gems. “Y’mean besides the fact that there’s necromantic stuff in here?” Sam asks in return, and Dean says, “Yeah. Besides that.” Sam shakes his head, opens his mouth to speak, then stops, then says, “I didn’t buy this stuff. I didn’t even see her put this stuff in the bag.” 

Dean glances at him, then back at everything lying spread out on the table, and says, “Maybe she’s a magician, too. Look, you didn’t steal it, so it’s not hexed or anything, right?” Sam nods, “There aren’t any traces on these. It’s just odd, Dean.” Thankfully Dean doesn’t say what Sam’s thinking, that it’s odd even for them, the lifestyle they lead, a psychic with sleight-of-hand good enough to fool Sam, just claps Sam on the back and says, smiling, “Well, get to it, psychic geekboy. Sooner you do your magic thing, sooner I can get to sleep.” Sam snorts and says, “God knows you need it, cranky bitch,” and is halfway to the bathroom to fill a plastic cup with water when Dean retorts, “Fucking princess.” Sam rolls his eyes, and when Dean smiles in return, Dean’s eyes hold a curious light that Sam doesn’t understand and doesn’t question. 

They move one of the beds so Sam can outline a five-pointed star on the floor with pine needles and patchouli, and Dean pulls a chair closer and sits down, rock-salt-loaded shotgun across his knees. It’s the best Dean can do, watching Sam’s physical back while Sam’s spirit is out wandering, and Sam appreciates it, even as Dean’s stare makes him a little nervous. It takes a few clicks of the lighter to get the last red candle lit, but when all five, placed at the pentacle’s points, are merrily dancing, Sam dabs lavender oil on his eyelids and breathes sideways, slipping into the psychic plane. 

\--

The others here seem to be focusing on a glowing black spot in the distance, a black that reminds Sam of Adam’s hair through a haze of power, and the memory makes Sam’s fire burst into flames all over his body, wreathing him in hot protection. He does feel better, and gets the flames back under control before he moves closer to the black spot. Psychics move out of his way until he’s right next to the black glow. Working slowly, he pours fire and warmth into the area, and if a knot of absence-of-life could unwind, loosen, Sam swears this one does. The glow smoothes out, turns into a dark, inky twilight, and Sam can almost feel gratitude pouring back towards him. _Soon_ , he sends into the black, along with his fire. _I’ll be there soon._

When he’s poured enough of his power out, he moves back and looks at the other psychics. _Leave her alone_ , he says, and his tone sounds more like advice than command, so they listen. _It’s disorienting to hear so many voices and not know where they’re coming from, even gradually. Leaving her be is the best thing to do, until I can get there and talk to her._ They all nod, one by one, and wander away, and he’s left staring at the glow and wondering what he looked like when his power broke.

 _Like a supernova of fire_ , Jeannie says behind him. _Too bright to look at, and in so much pain. We tried to help, but we only made it worse._ Sam nods, says, _It won’t be like that for her_. Jeannie smiles, he can feel it, hear it, even though he isn’t looking at her. _I believe you, lanmò-mennen. Now go home. She’ll be watched but left alone,_ and Sam trusts Jeannie, so he nods, slides back sideways, and opens his eyes. Dean’s sitting there, still, but the instant after he asks if everything’s all right and Sam says yes, he gets up and goes into the bathroom, locking the door and turning on the shower. Sam stares, then shrugs, and unfolds his legs from their cramps, blowing out the candles and scattering the outline of the star. Smoke curls lazily in the air, and Sam falls into bed and asleep before Dean emerges. 

\--

Dean wakes him up by throwing a pillow at him, and Sam rolls over and almost out of bed. Normally, that wouldn’t be all that bad, but he’s floating six feet off of the ground, and when he looks, everything else is, too, including Dean’s bed, Dean on it and looking too amused for comfort. “Dude. Vertigo or something. Can we have a little gravity?” Sam groans, puts everything down with a muffled, “Sorry.” Dean doesn’t say anything for a moment and Sam sits straight up, eyes narrowed, at the exact moment Dean says, “You haven’t done that for a while,” and Dean waits a beat before asking, “What?” Sam shakes his head, reaches inward, and then his eyes go wide as he realises. “What is it?” Dean asks again, and Sam says, “It’s the other psychic, I think. She’s connected to me, releasing some of the pressure, maybe?” Dean frowns, legs swinging off the bed, and he’s facing Sam when he says, “Okay, two things. This psychic’s a she?” Sam nods and Dean makes a face before asking, “What do you mean, she’s connected to you? Is this a good thing or a ‘we-need-salt-and-fire’ thing?” Sam laughs, leans back against the headboard, and says, “It’s all right. And even better, I have a straight line to her now. We’ll be able to find her without any trouble.”

\--

They go for a run, quick because it’s dry and dusty, and then get cleaned up. Dean drives and they stop for breakfast a few towns over. By the end of the day, they’re staring at a ‘Welcome to Floristan, California!’ sign and Sam’s so against this whole idea that the air in the car’s twenty degrees warmer than the cicada-laced air outside. Dean’s worried, Sam knows that, and he thinks that maybe he understands now how Dean feels every time they drive into Lawrence. “I’m sorry,” he blurts out, and Dean turns to look at him eyebrow raised in question. “For what, Sammy?” Dean asks, and Sam’s just not sure how to say everything he means, so he finally settles on, “I think I melted your M&Ms,” and he opens the glove compartment and pulls out the half-eaten bag, peering inside. “You’re buying me new ones later,” Dean says, no argument possible, and Sam nods and lets his lips smile, dropping the bag back into the glovebox and holding his hands up in mock surrender, body language playful while his eyes are still worried, still serious. 

Another couple of minutes of silence pass and Dean asks, “You gonna be okay?” There’s a slight sheen of sweat on Dean’s upper lip and Sam kicks himself and the other psychic for wreaking this much havoc with his usually tight control. “Perfectly,” Sam replies, and Dean lets him have the lie, starts up the car and drives into California. 

\--

They enter Palo Alto from the north in the mid-afternoon pre-rush hour traffic, down 84 and coming off the Dumbarton, and find a motel eerily similar to the one they stayed in the night before, though the receptionist is a bored college co-ed popping gum and eyeing them a little too predatorily for Sam’s taste, quite unlike the old grandma-type who checked them into the motel in Foresthill less than twelve hours ago. The girl looks too young for Sam to have known her here, or for her to recognise him, and he thanks God for small mercies. The room isn’t cheap, nothing is in this area, but they aren’t paying, Dirk Garrett is, and the lie rankles for some reason, here, when it doesn’t anymore anywhere else across the country. 

\--

After dinner, Sam gets behind the wheel of the Impala, Dean riding shotgun, and drives to his old apartment, his and Jess’, and sits parked on the other side of the street staring up at their old bedroom window. The landlord has rebuilt the damaged building and the white surface looks new, out of place, too white, like sticking a bandage over a gaping hole. He can’t take his eyes away. He’s seeing two things superimposed over each other: the week he and Jess moved in, surrounded by their friends and boxes of a new life, a new future; and the night he and Dean stood here, watching it all burn to ash like the body of a spirit that just won’t let go. Dean doesn’t say anything as Sam sits and stares, furiously blinking back tears and screams, just like he doesn’t say anything when Sam drives away, back in the direction of their motel. 

They’ve decided that tomorrow’s early enough to look for the psychic and it takes Sam a handful of minutes sitting in the motel room to realise he can’t stay inside. He needs to get out, needs to do something, so he changes into running clothes and raises an eyebrow at Dean, half invitation, half challenge, and Dean smirks. “You’re on,” he says, and while Dean changes, Sam mentally plans a route. He wants to avoid the runs he used to make through the city and campus, all those times he ran at two in the morning, three in the afternoon, restless like he is now, but it’s too far to the airport and Bay, and he saw a sign for construction heading toward the preserve, so when Dean’s ready, Sam drives them in the direction of Lake Lag, circling around Stanford. 

It still hurts, seeing the lake, smelling freshwater mixed with the salt water brought inland by that Pacific-kissed breeze, and he says, abruptly, “When you emailed, my freshman year? I’d been here a few hours before that.” Dean’s got this cautious look on his face, like he isn’t sure what brought this up and doesn’t know where it’s going, but he nods. “You were playing some game?” he asks, tone as careful as his expression, and Sam knows he doesn’t really ever talk about his years here, but he’s _back_ and Dean’s here, and it hurts, hurts so much to see everything through a hunter’s transient eyes, no Jess to go home to, no friends to go out with, no prosaic things to worry about. 

Dean’s _here_ , though, doing this with him, and Sam’s about ready to break apart, but instead he says, “It’s called The Game, capitalised,” as he stretches, loosens muscles that ache from being cramped in the Impala almost constantly for the past three days, muscles that are tense for more reasons that the new psychic they’ll be meeting tomorrow. “It’s played a few different times a year, in different places. I was going to hunt that Hallowe’en, but Jess,” and his voice catches, just a little, before he goes on, “guilt-tripped me into subbing for one of her teammates. Becky, in St. Louis, was the captain and had a complete nervous breakdown every twenty minutes for thirty-eight hours.” Dean snorts, says, “Because she seemed so mellow when I met her.” They start jogging and Dean asks, “So it’s like a treasure hunt or something?” and Sam laughs between breaths, nods. “Treasure hunt for geeks,” he says, and Dean instantly comes back with, “Well, no wonder you won, then, geekboy,” and the rest of the run passes in silent camaraderie, just the sound of their shoes smacking against concrete and dirt in rhythm, Dean right on Sam’s shoulder, comforting and _there_.

\--

Sam drops Dean off at a bar later that night, after dinner, and drives to the church he and Jess used to go to, the two of them for Advent and holidays, the one he used to haunt in that time of day sometime between far too early and way too late. The doors are unlocked, as always, and the lights inside are dim as Sam crosses himself with Holy Water and slips into the back pew, kneeling as he’s knelt here so many times before in a life that doesn’t feel like his. He doesn’t pray, just kneels silently, head bowed and eyes closed, soaking in the peace and quiet, the nearly-healed burns around his neck throbbing in time with his heartbeat, one of the only remaining scars from his run-in with Adam one month ago. 

When he sits up, one hand moves to rub his chest, pressing on the faded white lines of the symbol Adam carved into him with Sam’s knife, the knife tucked into the back of his jeans even now. It’s an unconscious gesture, really, though he’s trying to be more aware of when he does it. He’s caught Dean watching when he makes it, noticed the look in Dean’s eyes. “It’s been some time,” the priest says and Sam returns the smile, though his wears an edge of loss. It always has, here in Palo Alto, but he mourns different things now, different people, and the priest nods as if he understands. 

“When I didn’t see you again, I assumed you returned to your other life,” and Sam nods, wondering what to tell the priest, how to condense the past months, years, so that this man, his only confidant here, will understand. “The thing that killed her, it was the same thing that killed my mother. A demon,” and the priest nods again, asks, “And your brother, your father. You were all reconciled?” That makes Sam smile and he half-laughs as he admits, “Yeah. We still have our rough spots, but it’s good now. We killed the demon, and I,” he pauses, searches for words, finally says, “I couldn’t leave it again. Can’t leave my family, can’t go through it all again.” It’s the truth, even if it’s not the entire truth—even if he left and went back to school, he’d still have this power, and what would he do the first time he lost control in front of someone who couldn’t, wouldn’t, understand? “You’re happy?” the priest asks, and Sam doesn’t have to think before he replies, “Yes.” 

“What brings you back?” is the next question and Sam shifts in the pew. “A new player’s joining the game,” he finally says, sidestepping the issue of psychics and abilities. “My brother and I came to check it out, see if it’s going to be trouble,” and the priest says, “Well, be careful. You seem, I’m not sure how to describe it, Sam, but as if you’re more you, now. Don’t lose that,” and the priest blesses Sam before he leaves through one of the side doors. Sam thinks about it, guesses that he is more himself now, not needing to hide what he was trained to be, the block on his power broken, and walks out, grace and sleek muscle genuflecting, in the hope that Dean hasn’t gotten into too much trouble without him. 

\--

Sam’s limbs are heavy and weighted down when he finally gets back to the motel room, Dean half-carrying him. “I’ll never understand you, Sammy. Two drinks go straight to your head, but you’re fucking huge. I’m ashamed to be related to you, sometimes,” a steady stream of the same type of muttering as Dean wrestles Sam’s shoes off and dumps Sam in bed. Sam slurs something about psychics and alcohol never mixing as well as Jack and beer chasers, and promptly falls asleep.


	3. Geometry

He has odd dreams, feelings and sensations mixed in with the ever-present fire, emotions that he knows aren’t his but he can’t seem to separate himself from them no matter how much he tries. Sometime in the night, flames crowning his head and covering his feet, he remembers the other psychic and stops fighting the foreign sensations, instead completely giving into them, letting them soak into him along with the heat. It’s not a vision, not the same ache, but similar, so closely bound to another person. Pain, she’s in pain and terrified, and reaching out to him in a way that she doesn’t understand at all but needs. He sends her as much reassurance as he can, reassurance and comfort and the promise that helps it on its way, nearly there. She calms, more with every minute that their dreams are shared, as if the fire he dreams about every night, the fire that he holds in his bones, warms and soothes her, and when he slips out of sleep and into wakefulness, she projects a feeling of self-confidence, not firm by any means, but enough. 

Sam lays there for a minute, eyes closed, but the more awake he gets, the more he feels that something’s wrong. He opens his eyes and sits up, and Dean’s standing above Sam’s bed, holding a crucifix in Sam’s direction. “ _Christo_ ,” Sam says, no hesitation, because this isn’t that uncommon anymore, just a precaution. Dean breathes out and lowers the crucifix before stepping to one side, and Sam’s jaw drops. The bag of supplies they’d picked up in Denver hadn’t been unpacked last night and Sam thought that it was still buried at the bottom of his bag. Now it’s on the table, all of the necromantic elements—black candles, onyx pieces, vials of crushed belladonna and henbane leaves—floating a few inches above the surface of the table and spinning slowly. 

It takes Dean saying, “You can stop that, right?” to get Sam struggling with his power, mouth closed as he fights to stay connected to the other psychic and negate her influence over his gift both, and by the time he’s done, five minutes later, everything’s clattering back onto the table and he’s wrung out and exhausted. Dean perches on Sam’s bed, claps his hand on Sam’s shoulder, and eyes Sam with a worried look. “This mean what I think it does?” Dean asks, and Sam rubs his eyes before he says, “If you’re thinking that she’s some flavour of necromancer, then yes.” They both exhale at the same time, and Dean says, “Why’s it always gotta be us, huh?” with such a woe-is-me pout that Sam can’t help but chuckle. 

\--

After showers and breakfast, during which Dean has no trouble eating and Sam spends the time ripping his toast apart and watching Dean shovel food into his mouth, they get into the Impala, Sam driving. It’s not just for practicality’s sake; Dean’s still complaining about the roads, and as Sam turns onto Oregon Expressway, he snaps, “It’s not as bad as ‘Frisco or San Diego,” and Dean pauses before asking, “When were you driving in San Diego?” Sam checks the rearview mirror and changes lanes, then says, “Jess was from San Diego,” nothing more. It makes Dean stop complaining and though Sam knows his brother’s just trying to take Sam’s mind off what they’re doing, where they are, Sam prefers the silence. Evidently Dean gets this because he doesn’t say anything as Sam follows the thread connecting him to the new psychic, not until Sam parks and looks with disbelief at the house they’re in front of. “Hey, isn’t this where I picked you up?” Dean says, and Sam stares at Liz’s house, checking the psychic thread to see if he’s missed something. It doesn’t seem like he has, so he gets out of the Impala and starts walking up the driveway, stepping over a cat lying on the sidewalk. 

The nearly-there feeling grows when Sam steps onto the front porch, Dean right behind him and tense. Sam rings the doorbell and braces himself when he hears footsteps. The door opens and he smiles at Liz, says, “Surprise?” and finds himself with armfuls of curvy brunette a moment later, something inside of his power slotting into place, grinning as Liz shrieks his name and starts going on about how unexpected this is, how long has he been in town, what the hell is he doing back. When she finally lets go of him, she smacks his arm, saying, “That’s for not keeping in touch. One lousy email a week, nothing more than hello, how are you?” Sam shrugs, takes in Liz’s bloodshot eyes, her pale skin, the less than impeccable clothes as he remembers the way she used to smile on the rare occasions he talked about his mother. She understood, she always said, talking about her stepmother, the way her birth mother died when she was young, not even a year old. Fuck. 

“This is Dean,” he says, moving slightly so she can see Dean, and Sam adds, “My brother.” Liz looks at Sam, as if she can’t decide whether to narrow her eyes or let them widen, and then smiles at Dean, holds the door open. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Dean. Come on in, no use standing out here all day.” Dean smiles and follows Sam inside, giving Sam a look that Sam knows means Dean’s impressed with the house. He can remember the first time he stepped foot in Liz’s house for a history study group, and was taken aback by the sheer level of class Liz decorated with and seemed to take for granted, and Liz’s taste has, if anything, improved. 

Liz gets them both a beer and takes them into the den, sits them down and says, “So, really, Sam. Why’re you back? I never thought I’d see you this side of the state line again,” and Sam looks down at the beer in his hands, makes this awkward smile, and takes a deep breath. “It’s you, actually,” and Liz looks puzzled, eyes flickering between him and Dean. “What’s been happening to you lately,” and now Liz looks defensive, like he just insulted the Seurat print on the wall behind him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, wariness colouring the tone, and Dean snorts, takes a long sip of his beer. Before Liz can say anything, but not before she’s glaring in Dean’s direction, Sam says, “Your dreams. You’ve been hearing things lately, seeing things,” drawing her attention back to him. “Someone told you that they were coming to help you,” and Liz looks at Sam before her eyes slide to Dean. “Not me, princess,” he drawls, and Liz looks back at Sam, the picture of disbelief. Sam nods and it takes her a minute before she can say, “Explain, Sam.” He hears something in her voice beyond the confusion, the hope, the panic, some edge of steel he thinks has been there all along but which he’s only noticing now. He nods, says, “All right,” and starts talking. 

\--

By the time he’s done, a couple hours have passed and Liz looks shell-shocked. “The whole time you were here, the way you,” she says, then cuts herself off. Dean looks pensive, Sam’s said more about his time here than Dean’s ever heard before, even if he didn’t go into detail, just mentioned the hunts he’d been on while he was still a student. “You never told Jess, did you?” Liz asks. “You never told anyone you knew here.” Sam’s jaw clenches and he says, “I told the priest, under the Seal, but no one else. Jess,” he says, taking a breath, “I thought about it. I was planning on it someday.” Liz nods, an absent gesture since she looks deep in thought, and Sam waits, not willing to look at Dean or think about how talking about Jess is making him feel. All of this, what he’s told Liz, must be this world-changing revelation, finding out that creatures of legend are real, that one of them killed her mother, that a friend she thought of as a brother has this whole other life, and Sam thinks that, maybe, that’s another reason to be thankful to Dad; having grown up the way he did, Sam was never blind-sided to this extent. 

They all sit in silence for a few minutes as Liz tries to comprehend everything Sam told her, and she finally looks up, back and forth from Sam to Dean, and says, “So you’re going to make this, this _thing_ , me being a psychic, easier? Both of you?” and Dean leans forward, pinning her with his game face, the one Sam usually only sees when Dean’s ready to shoot, decapitate, exorcise, or otherwise kill something. “Sam’s going to help,” Dean says, his voice even and almost deceptively pleasant. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t hurt him.” Liz looks taken aback and Sam says, “Dean,” but Dean shakes his head and keeps going, tone turning low now, promises and threats of pain and danger woven underneath his words. “We don’t have the best history when it comes to necromancers, and the last psychic touched by the demon tried to kill us. Sam might like you, but if it comes down to it, I won’t hesitate to pull the trigger and scatter your ashes. Got it?” Liz stares and studies Dean, and Sam can see the moment when she decides to believe Dean; she pales and leans back, away, and then nods, “Got it.”

\--

Liz calls for Chinese and they take a break from the serious discussions for a while, though Liz sits closer to Sam than Dean, her eyes darting warily in Dean’s direction from time to time, as if Dean might, at any moment, set his sweet and sour beef down and attack her. Sam tries to distract her by asking about some of their mutual friends and by the time it’s devolved into a general gossip-fest about one of the professor’s affair with another and the recent decline in quality law school applicants, she’s calmer. The phone rings and Liz gets up to answer it, disappearing into another room and leaving Sam and Dean alone. 

“Do you miss it?” Dean asks abruptly, and Sam curses himself for sounding so interested in the new application process law school candidates have to go through. “Sometimes,” he says, unwilling to lie, not when they’ve been trying to be more honest with each other lately. “I miss it, yeah, but,” he’s not sure how to explain it. “It was hell, y’know, trying to forget about you and Dad and be normal. I never really did, just learned to hide it better. I don’t, I can’t do it again,” he says, and then Liz comes back before Sam can add, _I don’t want to._

\--

They clear lunch away, Sam and Liz, while Dean cases the house, and they watch as Dean goes outside, heading for the Impala’s trunk and nearly tripping over a cat. Sam knows what Dean’s getting, guns and salt and chalk for runes, bags of herbs for the house, and he smiles before he can catch himself. “The way you talked about him, when you did,” Liz says, startling Sam, making him look at her as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. “I never thought it was like this.” Sam cocks his head, asks, “Like what?” and Liz smiles, shrugs, and reaches up to put a glass away. “Like you love him. I didn’t expect that.” Sam looks out, sees Dean shut the trunk and reach in the back seat for a plastic shopping bag, and says, “It’s Dean,” as if that’s meant to be an answer. 

When Dean brings everything inside, he gives Sam the shopping bag and chalk, and starts laying out salt at every entrance to the house. “Safety precaution,” Sam says, and Liz gets this look, like she finally understands that some of the things Sam did in the past, that all of his friends attributed to superstition, are more than mere habit, might actually be important. Sam makes her a cup of tea, tossing in a handful of herbs, mixture courtesy of Missouri when they passed through Lawrence on the way out here. Liz asks what the herbs are and Sam says, “No clue. I don’t want to know and neither do you. Just drink it for now,” and goes to start chalking protective sigils, runes, and glyphs over the house’s walls. 

She follows him, sipping at the tea while he traces symbols from memory, asking him what they mean, where they come from, and Sam tells her, “This one’s east European,” “This one’s Chinese,” “This keeps out incubi and succubi,” “This repels animal spirits.” He finds himself telling her about the tulpa in Richardson and Dean interjects some other detail every time he passes nearby, embellishing the story. When Dean finally says that the two guys running the website are major players in the underground supernatural society, Sam laughs and says, “They were geeks, Liz. Neither of them had ever even seen a ghost,” and Liz says, “But you almost died because of them, because of what they did.” Sam looks at Dean, who looks back, and Dean eventually says, “The tulpa wasn’t that bad. The freakin’ beer bottle glued to my hand, though,” before ducking into the kitchen to lay protective herbs along the wall line. Liz watches Dean go out of side, then blinks, slow and long. “Tired,” she says, as if she’s only just realising this, and Sam takes the empty mug from her hands and shoos her off to bed, but not before she says, “You two can sleep here, if you like. Cheaper.”

Sam nods, she goes into her bedroom and shuts the door, and the last rune gets finished, a nice, complicated Celtic knot that, if done right, is supposed to keep out any and every malevolent force, natural and supernatural. Of course, doing it wrong’s like an open invitation and it’s a bitch of a knot to chalk, so Sam’s not surprised to find Dean watching him when he finally lifts the chalk from the wall, keeping quiet and not interrupting. “You done?” Sam asks, and Dean says, “Yeah. Managed not to knock any new holes in the walls. You?” Sam smiles, leans on the wall, and cracks his knuckles, wrists. “This house’s had the crap warded out of it. Anything gets in now, it’s not my fault.”

They stand there for a minute, listening to the traffic from Alma Street, two blocks away, drift in through the open windows, and then Dean asks, “How long will we be here?” tone cautious even though Sam thinks Dean’s trying to play the question off as a casual one. It’s a good question, though, and one that Sam’s not sure how to answer. It took him weeks and he’s still calling Missouri to ask about things, and though he can read more than caution in the way Dean’s standing, Sam doesn’t know what that stance is supposed to mean. He thinks about it, then shrugs, “Dunno, but I don’t think it’ll be more than two weeks. Being here before her power breaks should make it easier. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know.” 

Dean nods once and says, “She’ll sleep for a while if she’s anything like you were. I’ll be back in the morning.” A month ago, a year ago, Sam would have let Dean go, but that was then, so moves to stand in front of the door and asks, “Where're you going?” Dean opens his mouth to answer, but Sam shakes his head and says, “No, Dean. You scared the shit out of her with the protective big-brother line, and you can’t back that up if you’re gone.” He pauses, adds, “Please don't go,” and Dean looks away, jaw clenching and unclenching, and eventually steps back and says, “I’m not sleeping on the couch.”

\--

They decide to get some sleep while Liz is passed out, and Sam has no trouble falling asleep when most people in this neighbourhood are getting ready to cook dinner. He’s never had trouble sleeping on Liz’s couch, either, and he shuts his eyes and almost immediately falls into fire. He can’t feel Liz, so Sam closes his eyes here and basks in the heat. Flames writhe against him, cocooning him in warm comfort, but then the nightmares come and the fire recedes, leaving him cold and panicked. 

\--

_The slip-sharp edge of a knife running over his chest, blade catching on his skin, slicing him up to the sound of coyote howls, and then coyotes surround him, tear him apart with long, sharp teeth, and he can feel every bite, every rip, and hands pry his ribcage apart and pull out his heart, still beating. Everything’s red, drenched in blood, and he’s choking on it, his heart keeping time with the coyotes and Adam, glossy black hair shining in the full moon, smiling wide and showing teeth, “Hunt you, hurt you. Kill you,” and Adam leans down, eyes pinning Sam to the floor as he lifts Sam’s heart to his lips and licks a stripe down it that Sam can feel, fingernails tearing through, across his throat, Adam laughing, sounds mixing with the coyotes, with the pounding rhythm of his still-beating heart._

\--

Hands, he can feel hands, and Sam reacts on instinct, grabbing and grappling, and although his eyes are open, he doesn’t see that he’s straddling Dean, hands around Dean’s throat, until Dean stills beneath him. Sam lets go, rolling off of his brother, and sees Liz in the hallway, shock visible even through the glassy cast of her eyes. “ _Fuck_ ,” Sam breathes, pushing himself up and stalking to the other side of the room, gathering his power and composure back under control before he can punch a hole in the wall. 

Dean stands up and he’s wary but not scared, like Liz, as he looks at Sam and says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about going back to the motel and getting the dream-catcher.” Sam rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms, and doesn’t look up when he replies, “I need to stop depending on it anyway, right?” Liz steps forward, then, and says, voice as distant as she looks, “What do you dream about, Sam, other than fire?” Sam won’t look back at Dean, but he can feel Dean’s eyes on him, resists the urge to touch the scar on his chest and remind himself that he’s still alive, that Dean _came_ for him. “It’s nothing, Liz. Go back to sleep.”


	4. Rhetoric

In an echo of Sam’s power breaking, he spends the next day teaching Liz how to breathe, telling her what she’s doing right and wrong, finding it much easier to connect to her power, not even released into her yet, than Missouri’s as a whole or any of the loa-ridden in part. Missouri feels like sand to his fire, a completely different and gritty kind of gift, and the loa-ridden feel like distant cousins, somehow, no matter their guédé, which vévé they call on, but with Liz, Sam’s beginning to understand what it means to know someone with a complementary gift, someone who resonates with _him_.

He leaves Liz alone after a couple of hours, telling her to keep going, sensing somehow that she’s carving out deep and careful channels for her power, and hunts down his brother. Dean’s in the back garden, in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, cleaning the guns. All of them, it looks like, and Sam smiles before he can help it. “If we’re boring you,” he says, and is gratified to see Dean jump, though Dean’s hands stay steady. “You don’t have to stay,” Sam adds, and then, compelled to be honest, he says, “I want you to, but what we’re doing, it must be pretty boring.” Dean turns and smiles, tilts his head so he can look over his sunglasses at Sam. “Don’t mind,” Dean says and Sam’s grateful for the look, because he sees truth in Dean’s eyes. “Besides, the guns needed cleaning and these fences are pretty high.” 

Sam moves to sit across from Dean, straddling the bench, looking over the garden for the first time since they arrived. The grass still smells freshly cut, and there are netted fairy lights draped over the bushes and shrubs near the house and fence. Mountain phlox is in full bloom, a heady scent mixed in with the salt air from the Bay and the smell of oil and cleaners. The last is so incongruous it makes Sam’s head spin. It helps when Dean asks, “So, Liz. This is her place?” if only to distract Sam and he absently replies, “Her dad’s, but yes. He’s a hotshot entertainment lawyer in L.A. and her mom was old East Coast money, I think.” There’s a pause, the wind carries the smell of barbecue and the sound of laughter, faint echoes of a mewling cat over the fence, and then Dean says, “She doesn’t seem like that. You and her, you were friends? Good friends?” 

Sam looks at Dean, who’s checking the sights of their best rifle, rubbing oil over the bolts and hinges and concentrating far too intently. “Sort of, I guess,” Sam says. “It took a while. We were in the same year, we had some classes together. She never talked about her money and never made me talk about,” Sam trails off, though Dean’s grimace means he heard the unspoken, _you and Dad,_ so Sam hurries on and says, “And sometimes I thought, when she talked about her mom, or smiled a certain way, that she understood. That _I_ almost understood.” 

Sam laughs, melancholic noise, and says, more quietly, “Jess was a little threatened by Liz, at times. I didn’t pick up on that for a while, but Jess thought.” He stops, shakes his head, and lets his hair fall over his face, cover his eyes; things like this are easier to talk about without looking at someone, and if doesn’t have to worry about what sort of expression he’s wearing, then he can focus on trying to calm himself, quiet this need for Jess that’s been growing teeth in the last month and impossible to ignore since the California state line. “They worked it out, somehow, or maybe when Jess and I moved in together it worked itself out. Liz is—was like a little sister.” 

The words hurt to say, the change in verb tense most of all, but seeing Dean’s face, devoid of expression, is even worse. Sam doesn’t need to be psychic to know what Dean’s thinking, so he says, “It all worked out, Dean. I’m fine where I am; you’ve got my back, and I’ve got yours,” and Dean’s smile is real but bitter, edged in reluctant acceptance. “What?” Sam asks, leaning forward so that Dean has no choice but to look at him, but before Dean can, Sam feels this pressure building at the base of his skull and fire ignites in his bones. “Shit,” he exhales, unable to see anything that isn’t limned in the silvers and whites of magic. Silver bullets, blessed iron rounds, Holy Water pellets flare in his vision, like the runes and sigils covering the house’s walls, the small glow of salt lines and protective sachets. 

He’s unaware of standing, rising, until he sees Dean and recoils with incomprehension, because he _sees_ Dean, not just Dean’s amulet, not just Dean’s sanctified weapons, but _Dean_ , the slip-slide play of skin over muscle, the thrum of blood pumping through veins over bones. Sam opens his mouth but another wave of pain hits and he’s running for Liz, hearing echoes of her panic in his mind. “ _SamhelphelphelpSamhurtshurtshelpSam_ ,” over and over again, and it’s like he’s melting, fire exploding in his bones, his muscles, his skin, running like liquid heat through his veins. He gets inside and heads for Liz, seeing her glow like black light across the room, incandescence pulsing in time with her frenzied heartbeats, growing bigger with every breath she takes. 

There’s no time for speech, so he throws his mind out as he drops to his knees beside her, telling her to calm, sending heat and warmth her way, instinct taking over as he covers her mind with fire. Sam slides them both sideways and dives before rebounding and bursting upwards, erupting onto the astral plane. Liz appears wreathed in black sunlight, deeper and darker than the starlit paths, and she’s choking, gasping for breath as Sam, skin on fire and lighting the plane, wraps her in his arms. 

“It’s done,” he murmurs, that and other soothing platitudes, rubbing circles on her back, until she hiccups once more and then looks up and out. “Where are we?” she whispers, eyes wide and red-rimmed, and Sam says, “The astral plane. Not very deep in, so it’s safe here, but our minds aren’t exactly in your living room.” Liz looks around, looks at Sam and nearly flinches out of his hold, but then she looks at her hands and arms. “You’re a necromancer,” Sam says, biting back a smile. “Black’s your thing.” Liz rolls her eyes, taking her first trip here better than Sam ever did, and saucily retorts, “What’s your excuse then, Mr ‘I’m-On-Fire?’” though her voice shakes a little. Sam laughs and doesn’t answer. 

\--

Time in the astral is a fluid thing, it doesn’t translate at all to the real world, so Sam shows Liz around, tells her about the dead, the starlit paths, and the deeper planes, says that he’ll go into more depth when they’re back in their bodies. She looks a little shocked at that reminder, glances down at her hands, then mutters something under her breath about astral not just being a clever name. There’s a chorus of the dead following them, and when they start reaching for him, Sam sighs and explains the psychic plane to Liz, how they can reach it from here. She nods, nervous expression on her face, and then he blinks and takes her with him, one step closer to their bodies. 

The psychic plane goes silent when they arrive, but Sam doesn’t think Liz notices. She’s too busy taking it all in, the grey twilight, the specks of power that represent all of the others all over the world, and Sam’s letting flames crown his head, a sign to the others. _There are so many,_ Liz murmurs, as she looks up at Sam. _All psychics?_ Sam doesn’t say anything, just turns and looks at Missouri, who’s standing there, silently judging Liz as Liz returns the frank, questioning stare. _Anyone who can reach this plane is a psychic, Elizabeth O’Connell,_ Missouri says, and Sam’s almost amused when Liz presses herself against him, as if Missouri scares her. Almost, but not quiet, because he remembers being wary of Missouri as well, and because having Liz there, so close, feels better than it should. A complementary, resonating power makes him feel safer even though she’s not trained, makes him warm and sets his fire humming, tames the hunger. It scares him, and Missouri’s eyes are kind and gentle, worried and sad, when she looks at him. _You did good, Sam,_ she says. _Now take her back home and be sure to feed her._

Sam nods, tells Liz how to get home, back to their plane and their bodies, and once she fades, he looks at Missouri and asks, _What is it?_ She shakes her head, says, _I’m not sure, Sam. I only know it isn’t good. Now shoo—you’re leaving that girl in your brother’s hands, and that’s not what she needs right now._ Sam laughs, thinks of his body, his aching knee, the feeling of sunlight on his skin and Dean radiating oil and panic, and slides back home.

\--

His vision isn’t completely back to normal when he opens his eyes, the edges of things are faintly blurry, but it’s otherwise good, and when he blinks enough to focus, Dean’s kneeling between him and Liz, holding a shotgun loaded with rock salt, and Liz is crying silver-lined tears. “We got a problem,” Dean murmurs, and helps Sam up, all but pushes Sam to the window. “Cats,” Sam says, blankly, looking out into the dark front garden and street, seeing cats everywhere. “How,” he begins, and Dean says, “Hours,” before Sam can ask. “It’s almost midnight now. Cats started coming ‘round about an hour after you two went tripping and there’s been more showing up every so often. I don’t suppose you know why we’re being infested?” Sam frowns, but shakes his head. “Or have any idea what we should do?” Sam shakes his head again, watching the cats, dozens of them and all of them black, sit outside, perfectly still. 

It seems like they’re waiting, but Sam doesn’t know what for, just like it seems they’ve come so close and no closer, and that doesn’t sound good, so he tries to gauge the distance. “Twenty feet?” he says, and Dean says, “Eighteen exactly.” Sam turns and looks at Dean, who smiles, showing teeth. “You were gone a while. I take it her power broke?” and the rapid changes in location and conversation are making Sam’s head spin. “Yeah. Necromancer, right? I should’ve known she’d need to be in the astral when it happened.” Dean gets this look, like he’s ready to argue, but then the cats move, all of them, leaving and blending into the night, and Sam sways on his feet like he’d love to pass out, and before he knows precisely what’s happening, Liz is asleep in her bed and Sam’s tucked in the guest room bed, wearing nothing but his boxers, a dream-catcher made of a broken plate and a torn towel hanging above him, glowing like a beacon in the darkness behind Sam’s closed eyelids.


	5. Dialectic

He wakes up with a sense that something’s not right, that something’s coming, and he dresses before creeping out into the hallway and down to the den, knife in hand. Liz is still sleeping but talking about snow and pine trees as he walks past her room, and Dean’s sleeping on the couch, hand wrapped around a gun as if he’s going to wake up shooting. Sam keeps going, walking through the house and not seeing anything, but the feeling doesn’t fade, just gets stronger. He looks out of the kitchen window and pauses, mouth going dry as he sees one cat in the lightening dawn, sprawled out on the grass, head resting against a fully grown stalk of corn. 

Looking behind him and listening, Sam makes sure that Dean and Liz haven’t followed him or started shooting things, and then reaches for a crossbow, opens the window, and aims at the cat. The arrowhead is iron, consecrated with Holy Water and dunked in dead man’s blood, and it should work, so Sam positions himself and falls still, waiting for the opportune moment. The cat opens its eyes, looks at Sam, then yawns, shimmers, and disappears. The corn does not, and Sam puts the crossbow down with a thunk, trying to decide what to do. Research, definitely, because burning the corn without knowing what it means or why it’s there might do more harm than good, but this combination, _cats_ and _corn_ , is so surreal that Sam starts laughing. 

He hears movement a minute later, smells oil and metal before Dean yawns and pads into the kitchen. He hears Dean stop, pause, and then his brother’s standing next to him, looking wide awake, taking in Sam and the crossbow and that mysterious stalk of corn. “I missed something,” Dean says, and Sam can’t help laughing again, because Dean sounds so matter-of-fact about it. “Yeah,” Sam eventually says, back leaning against the counter and watching as Dean hunts through the fridge for something before pulling out a carton of orange juice. “There was this _cat_ out there. It disappeared into thin air, like a spirit or ghost, something like that.” Dean drinks out of the carton and then offers it to Sam, who rolls his eyes and takes it, pulling two glasses out of the cabinet behind him. 

“Is that what woke you up?” Dean asks, and Sam says, “Maybe? Dunno,” before he realises that Dean’s really asking if Sam had nightmares, if the homemade dream-catcher didn’t work, so he adds, “I just had this sense that something was wrong.” It’s the right thing to say, because some tension leaves Dean’s body as Dean’s eyes light up. Sam knows that Dean’s had to be bored no matter what he says, stuck here babysitting two psychics, and he also knows that the thrill of the hunt must be swimming through Dean’s veins, so when Dean stalks off to check the house, Sam doesn’t tell Dean that he already has. 

Sam heads for the laptop in the office, checking on Liz as he moves, Dean prowling the walls of the house and looking for weaknesses. Liz’s eyes, thankfully, are still closed, body curled into a ball in the corner of her bed. Sam would be worried, but she’s smiling, so he goes into the office across the hall, sits down with a thud, and opens the computer. He doesn’t really have anything to go on except cats and corn, which is still funny enough to earn a snicker as he types in the keywords at a mythological site. Nothing, or, rather, nothing with the two together, so he heads for Google and again comes up empty-handed. 

Dean walks in a few minutes later, closes the door so as not to disturb Liz, and straddles a chair, rubbing his eyes. “House’s clean,” Dean says, puzzled look on his face as he adds, “One of your sigils looked off, though,” and that gets Sam’s attention. “Which one?” he asks, quickly followed by, “And what do you mean, ‘off?’” It might be a clue, or it might be a bad fucking sign, so when Dean says, “That one on the back window, looking out over the yard,” Sam breathes. Not the Celtic knot and not any of the Norse runes, though why one of the Russian picture-spells is affected is beyond Sam. 

On a whim, he goes back to the Encyclopedia Mythica site and types in ‘Russia’ and ‘cats,’ somehow unsurprised when the only thing that comes up is the usual page on witchcraft. Dean cranes his neck to look and after Sam’s leaned back and started rubbing his temples, asks, “I guess you couldn’t find anything?” It’s not accusatory, just a question, so Sam sighs, looks up at the ceiling. “Nothing.” He looks at Dean, turning at the neck, and snorts at the gleeful expression on Dean’s face. Dean, for his part, just grins and says, “I can feel a good one here, Sammy,” completely ignoring Sam’s huff at the nickname. 

\--

During breakfast, a loosely-defined meal of granola, fresh fruit, toast, and a plate of runny eggs and burnt bacon, Sam asks Liz what she dreamt about the night before. Dean shoots Sam a guarded look that relaxes when Liz says, something near wonder in her tone, “Snow. A forest in the middle of winter. Why?” Sam doesn’t look at Dean, who’s shovelling eggs and bacon into his mouth like someone else would actually want to eat them, and says, “What psychics dream about, sometimes it can be important. A grounding motif or a source of meditative focus,” and Dean leaves when it becomes apparent that this is a talk about psychic symbolism and not visions. 

Sam’s already redone the rune, Dean’s words about it being ‘off’ correct, in the two ways—not only was the chalk flaking off, leaving it half-formed on the window, but it seemed off-centre, tilted a few degrees to the left. Sam had gotten a sharp pain in his stomach seeing that, one tied to the sense of wrongness that woke him up, and he’d drawn two similar runes on either side of the altered one, then rubbed the altered one out. Thinking about it now, talking about motifs and grounding forces, Sam asks Liz, “Your neighbours, are any of them Russian?” not expecting anything from the answer. “No,” Liz says, frowning as if the change in topic’s thrown her off, “why?” Sam shakes his head and pointedly ignores the urge to look outside and see the stalk of corn, the corn that no one other than Dean seems to be aware of. 

Dean ducks his head through the archway and says, “Hey, Sam? I’m gonna go check out that thing,” and Liz looks at Sam, eyebrow raised. “Research,” Sam explains, and nods, listening as Dean leaves. His brother _is_ going to do some research, but probably not about anything Liz is thinking. They need to know the house’s history, the land’s history, if anything makes sense in connection with Russian iconography, cats, and corn, and there’s always the chance that someone working records at the courthouse or library knows Sam, would remember him. They’d decided that morning to send Dean out, for that reason among others, and so when the Impala starts up and drives away, Sam turns to Liz and smiles. “Now we can talk about the secret stuff,” he says, rubbing his palms together, and it’s to Liz’s credit that she looks sceptical, like even though she’s only seen this brotherly side of Sam for two days, she can’t believe there’s anything Sam keeps secret from Dean. That warms Sam in a way he can’t describe and he leads Liz into the den for a discussion about the planes, still strangely happy. 

\--

Sam stops in the middle of a sentence two hours later, tilting his head to one side. Liz says, “Sam, what,” before he holds up his hand in a request for silence. It’s not his hearing, he realises after a moment, not his physical hearing, but his senses are going off like a violin someone else is plucking, dissonant notes, one after the other. The longer Sam sits and listens, the more puzzled Liz gets, until Sam murmurs, “Listen. Not with your ears, but with your gift.” She looks over Sam’s shoulder, eyes going unfocused, but shakes her head and says, “I don’t hear anything.” It’s not Liz’s fault, Sam earned his instincts through years of training, but he irrationally misses Dean, who would feel it even without any psychic ability. Sam tucks that away for now and takes hold of Liz’s hands, telling her to close her eyes. Once she does, he says, voice soft and soothing, half audible, half-mental, “Think of snow, Liz. Imagine a forest, snow falling from the sky, snow under your feet, branches covered in white. It hits your face, your hands, falls silently. Are you there?” 

When she eventually says yes, Sam says, “Now, reach out. There’s still snow, but there’s something else there as well. A noise, or a smell, wind coming from the direction. Can you tell me what it is?” Sam can feel Liz send her new power out, physical body leaning as well, and the expression on her face changes the instant she learns how to sense discord in the planes, any and all of them. “Something’s crunching the snow,” she breathes, starting to panic, and Sam calms her, grounds her even as she’s narrating the changes in her mental world. “The wind, it’s stopped, and the trees are leaning away, fuck, the forest’s moving and it’s coming, Sam, coming for _me_ , oh, God, the snow’s turning _colours_ ,” and Sam wakes her out of her trance just as the back window shatters. 

Sam leaves Liz where she is, sitting cross-legged on the floor and blinking like she’s just woken up, going to check out the window. He’s holding a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, picking both up from one of the tables almost without realising what he’s doing, and he leans against the hallway wall before peering around the corner, gun cocked and aimed. Nothing’s there that he can see, but he can smell snow, pine forests, and that’s just wrong, so he steps forward cautiously, words of a prayer on his lips. He moves to the window, wary of the shards of glass, and looks out. There’s a layer of frost on the mountain phlox, the polished sheen of ice covers the picnic table, and it looks like the bulbs on the fairy lights have all shattered, but that’s it. It’s only when he steps back, intending to look for duct tape and cardboard, that he remembers the runes that were on that window, how he’d replaced them, and as he’s trying to decide what to do, the front door opens and Dean shouts that he’s back. 

He waits, knows that once Dean sees Liz, Dean will come to him, and he’s right, hears the murmur of voices a handful of seconds before Dean’s standing next to him. “You redrew the ward,” Dean says quietly, running a finger along the window sill, and Sam corrects him, “I drew two,” looking at the frosted flowers before turning to Dean, face telling Dean to make a decision about what they should do. Dean stands there for a moment, inhales the smell of winter, of _death_ , and then bursts into action. “We’re leaving,” he says, and they go into the den to tell Liz, who still looks shell-shocked. “Pack a bag _now_ ,” Dean says, and five minutes later, they’re all staring out of the open front door. Cats have filled the space between the house and the Impala, all of them black, all of them just sitting on their haunches, watching the three humans. A car drives past and the driver waves at Liz and calls out a greeting, and Dean says, “Changed my mind,” slamming the door, locking it, laying down two extra lines of salt. “We’re staying here.”

\--

It feels like a siege, albeit a strange one, cats out front, creeping vines of ice in the back, covering the window as if the ice is glass with a chilly air breezing off of it. Liz looks pale, as if she’d like to faint, but they can’t leave her alone, so they make her lie down on the couch in the den while Sam and Dean pow-wow on the floor next to her, Sam still holding his knife, Dean’s hand securely gripping his favourite gun. “What’d you find out?” Sam asks, and Dean shakes his head, eyes flickering to the room’s entry points every so often. “Not much. House was built in the sixties, owned by an Asian-sounding family until O’Connell bought it, and that’s Irish. Land before that was forest and marsh, nothing Russian that I’m seeing at all. What about you two, what were you doing when this happened?” 

Sam shakes his head, following Dean’s gaze as it swings in the direction of the back window, hearing the crackle of ice echo through the house. Liz shivers at the noise, makes this little whimper as well, and Sam pulls a blanket out of the chest next to the couch, covers her, before answering. “I felt something,” he says, searching for words. “Sensed something, like this morning. Not anything immediate, so I showed Liz how to sense it as well. She panicked, she doesn’t have our training,” Sam trails off, and Dean asks, “When you first started vibing, it was everything, all the time, especially when you were stressed,” and Dean’s not being judgmental, just stating a fact. “The window broke,” Dean says, “and you didn’t once think it was her, that she did it?” Sam pauses, thinks about that, the ice, and says, “No,” firmly. “Not once. She didn’t break the window and she’s not summoning the cats.” 

Dean nods, asks, “Could she be connected to whatever _is_ doing it?” and Sam stops. His mind races, enhanced by his power, recalling little things from years ago, adding in the odd surges in the psychic fabric over Liz’s house the past couple days, the cats, the ice, blue flowers and red towels, the stalk of corn, orange juice and toast. Dean doesn’t say anything, just watches and doesn’t react at all when Sam flows upwards and walks into Liz’s room. Sam looks around, trying to decipher what his memory’s telling him, prompting him. His eyes settle on the shelf above the window, and he reaches up and pulls down a set of matreshki. 

One fingertip traces over the gold paint as he stares at it, then carries it back to the den, dropping the nested dolls into Dean’s waiting hands. Sam doesn’t stop there, though; he leans over Liz and asks, “Your mother, Liz—where was she from?” Liz shrinks back from him, which hurts in some distant part of him, and whispers, “Boston,” recoiling when Sam growls, fire inside of him hungry, needing fuel, trying to get out from under its barriers. “Beyond that, Liz. Was she Irish? Scottish? What?” Liz is curled up into a ball, knees pressed against her chest, staring up at Sam with fear in her eyes and he’s about ready to tear something apart by the time she finally stutters out, “Russia. Today, Latvia, with the Wall down,” and she trails off when it’s obvious Sam’s not paying her any more attention. 

Dean stands up as well, draws Sam’s attention away from Liz, tosses the matreshki so it lands harmlessly on an armchair. “Black cats mean death,” Dean says, “and she’s a necromancer. Maybe it’s a death spirit tied to the ancestry.” Sam thinks about it, pacing as he does, prowling like an animal in a cage, like the fire locked inside of his bones. “That doesn’t explain the corn,” he points out, “and the Celtic knot should keep everything out, but it isn’t,” still able to think despite the hunger he feels, and at that moment, he has enough presence of mind to say, “Not good,” before he topples to the floor, drawn to a different plane.


	6. Astronomy

He opens his eyes in the astral, deeper than he’s ever been before, the darkness around him lit up like noon by stars. This is near the end of the starlit paths, where they join and where the trapped or wandering dead come when they’re ready to move on. The paths converge in front of him, and he looks for a moment, hearing the siren song of the paths, the clarion call of a final freedom, music pleading for him to lay everything to rest and be still and it takes more effort than Sam will ever confess to step back, away from the paths, and a certain, final freedom. He’d been warned not to travel this far into the astral, known instinctively his first time here in the plane that he might not be able to hold onto life in the face of this temptation, but Dean’s waiting for him, his fire’s ready to burn something, anything, up, and he wants to know why he’s here. A cat meows and Sam turns his back to the paths, blinking at the woman who’s now standing in front of him, watching him. “Who are you?” he asks, voice small and hollow in the infinite cavern of the paths, as his fire flares up and out of his bones, surrounding him. 

She smiles, steps closer, two black cats circling her feet as she moves, rubbing against her ankles and leaving hair on the flowing gypsy skirt. She’s holding another cat in her arms, purring as it sleeps, and she offers it to Sam, who shakes his head and asks again, “Who are you?” voice stronger, more sure. “They call me Karta,” she replies, accent harsh, east European, the ‘k’ a sharp crack, the ‘r’ rolled in the hollow of her cheeks. “What do you want with us?” Sam asks, and Karta laughs, the sound weaving in with the cat’s purring and meowing. “The girl,” Karta says, “the necromancer. She is mine.” 

Sam looks at Karta, eyes narrowed, then says, “Oh, _fuck_ ,” as he’s pulled back to his body, out of the astral. As he goes, he hears her say, “All myths are based on some fact, young warrior. All legends have a speck of truth to them.” 

\--

“No, send me back, let me go!” he shouts, back in his body, Dean holding him down. “Damn it, Dean, I was getting answers!” Dean doesn’t apologise, just says, “I need you here, Sam,” in a tone that means Dean’s starting to get worried. “Why?” Sam asks, he can’t help pushing, not when he was close to getting an explanation for all of this, and Dean seems to understand this or guesses at it, because he pulls Sam up and shows Sam the ice creeping into the house, the icicles forming on the ceiling above Liz, who’s pale blue and shivering on the couch, eyes wide and wild. “I tried moving her but the ice followed. We’re running out of time, Sam. What did you find out?” Sam pauses, says, “I need the laptop,” and staggers on his feet, off-balance, as Dean immediately lets go of Sam’s shoulders and goes to get the computer.

The search pops up with a result right away, and Dean’s reading over his shoulder. “A fate,” Dean says. “A goddess. She’s being stalked by a goddess?” Sam shakes his head, rubs a temple in hopes it will help stop the pounding; travelling so often, so abruptly, between the planes is bad enough with preparation, but it’s lethal without. “There’s no such thing,” he says, “only one God, but,” he adds, Karta’s words still bouncing around in his skull, “every legend is based in some truth.” Dean just looks at him, asks, “I take it you have an idea?” 

Sam checks his favourites, bookmarked reference sites across the internet, pulls up a page on the importance of bloodlines, blood-specific gifts and curses. While he’s scanning the words, refreshing his memory, he says, “A fate wouldn’t like necromancers of any type, because they can subvert the natural cycle of life. Karta’s a Latvian goddess, it makes sense she’d be limited to Latvian necromancers.” Dean says, “Yeah, but you said there isn’t a goddess. What does that make her, then?” Sam bites his lower lip too hard, swipes his tongue over the sting, before he says, “A witch, I’d guess. Maybe even a necromancer herself, which’d explain why she doesn’t like the others. It’d fit with the cats.” Dean doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t dismiss Sam’s conclusion, either. “The corn?” Dean asks, and that one stumps Sam enough to make him walk to the kitchen, look out of the window at the stalk and the cats surrounding it. “It’s full-grown,” Sam eventually says. “Time for the harvest.” 

\--

The pressing question, of course, is how to get this to stop. Sam and Dean have been tossing around ideas for an hour, the cats still sitting motionless, the ice creeping slow enough to afford them this luxury, Liz tossing and turning in a restless sleep under a thick table in the case the icicles decide to fall. The house is frigid, everyone’s breath fogging in the air, and both Winchesters have put on coats, gloves. “I still say an invocation, a protected circle, and enough firepower to take down a city,” Dean says, and Sam exhales, rubs his eyes. His headache’s been heightened with the temperature changes, getting worse as the stench of death magic grows heavier and heavier. “An invocation won’t work,” Sam says, for the second or ninth time, and Dean replies, “You don’t know that, Sam. If she’s tied herself to the nature of a goddess, she’d be forced to answer.” 

It’s a good point, but not enough to convince Sam. “Let me go back into the astral, see if I can get any more information,” and Dean’s not going to let that happen either. “C’mon, Sam, admit it, the invocation’ll work,” Dean says, pushing, and Sam explodes, standing up, in a rage, his headache, the heat in his bones pushing him beyond merely irritated. It’s enough anger to set things floating, even with some of his power flowing to Liz across their resonance, warming her up so she isn’t as blue anymore. Dean steps back, wary, and that seems to feed Sam’s anger enough so that he can leap into the astral without a ritual or preparation, bursting into the starlit paths in a cloud of fire. 

\--

“She is mine,” Karta says, and Sam bares his teeth at her. “She’s _mine_ ,” he spits, “my friend, my student, my complement. Your claim is old, centuries old, and doesn’t even apply.” The cats at Karta’s feet hiss at Sam, their fur standing on end as they prowl, following Karta as she steps forward, until her face is inches from Sam’s. “Listen, child,” she says, somewhere between a murmur and a promise. “They call me Karta, the oldest of the fates, elder sister of Laima,” and Sam cuts her off with a laugh, saying, “That’s what they call you, sure, but not who you are, not unless you’re stupid enough to believe your own lies.” She smiles, showing her teeth, and replies, “Names have power here, and here I am Karta. You know nothing of me, of my people. When the snows came, where were you? When the harvests failed, where were you?” 

Sam blinks lazily and says, “Not convincing people I was all-mighty, that’s for damn sure. Not stealing their lives to save my own.” Karta snarls, whirls away. “One child for the lives of them _all_!” she shrieks. “Not even one every hundred years! They _covenanted_ with me,” and Sam’s face turns white. Karta smiles, a predatory expression better suited to a lioness on the hunt, about to pounce, and she says, “Oh, yes. They made a covenant with me, promised in breath, written and signed in blood, in the light of a bone-fire. That is more power than even your little knots can ward against.” She’s exultant, her eyes reflecting Sam’s fire. “You cannot stop me from taking her, child, because I _am_ Karta. I have become Karta in the eyes of those who matter, I am their goddess of fate, and the girl is mine.” 

Sam’s stomach is sinking, there are still tricks he can try but he doubts any of them will work, so he quells the panic and asks, formally, “May I see the covenant between Karta and the people she contracted with?” Karta holds out her hand and Sam takes it, following as she steps into one of the paths, stars and supernovas spinning around them faster than Sam can keep track of, extremes of hot and cold, light and darkness so dazzling that he steps out of the path, gasping. Karta gives him an indulgent smile, then gestures, ice flowing from her arm and falling, freezing into a smooth and glassy screen. 

He can see people on it, in it, and watches as a villager from long ago, in halting language, promises a child, possessed of certain gifts, to a woman who looks like Karta, even as she is now. Karta, in turn, promises that the child will dream of snow and forests, that the snow the child dreams of won’t fall on the village, that the forests the child dreams of will provide for the village, and that the life of the child is a worthy sacrifice. “I took children, always,” the Karta next to him, watching history, whispers, almost sad. “Before they knew themselves, before others knew them. But this one, her gift was blocked and I didn’t know.” Sam, eyes glued to the ice-screen, watching the villager open a vein to cement the deal as a mother carrying a screaming infant steps forward, says, “There was a demon,” and Karta sighs, a sound that echoes the wind sweeping over snow-ridden tree branches, as she says, “I begin to see. And you, you killed this demon, yes? It is written on you,” and Sam says, “My brother and I, and our father.” Karta’s silent for a moment, the screen of ice melting and falling into forever. “A family of warriors with no women. It is something I have not seen in many years. I will give you this girl’s life if I may have your brother’s. The blood and life of a warrior is strong indeed.” 

\--

Sam’s ripped out of the plane and he blacks out when he realises he’s back in his body, the pounding in his head too strong to ignore. He sees a wall of fire, hears Karta tell him, “ _You are Yerik, the bargain-maker, now. Pick who I will take, choose who will fulfil the contract, and I will let the other live with my blessing. That is no small thing, the blessing of one such as I, yes?_ ” before the fire speeds towards him and overtakes him, burning his mind to cinders. 

\--

Noise, there’s noise, skimming into his brain, at first a wordless blur, but it soon separates into syllables, into “Sam,” “Wake,” and, “Help.” He floats on a wave of flames and lets the words string together as he struggles closer to consciousness, and then he’s awake, gasping for breath as if he’s just come from being underwater. Sam sits up, too fast, black lace spinning itself at the edges of his vision, chest heaving as his fingers dig into whatever surface they’re on, pleading for sleep, for rest, for time to recover. He opens his eyes, sees Dean with blue skin, shivering, and parts his lips to speak but nothing comes out. He doesn’t remember why, doesn’t know what’s happened, and the fingers of one hand touch his lips, his throat, in puzzled wonderment. 

“Sammy? You with me yet, ‘cause dude, I could _really_ use some help,” Dean says, and Sam screws his eyes shut then opens them, focused on Dean, hearing the echo of cats in his ears. “I need to know what you did,” Dean’s saying, “because the ice, it’s coming after me as well now,” and Sam’s either still out of it or never heard this tone of Dean’s before, though it sounds dangerously close to betrayed. 

Sam looks around, sees that the ice has filled the hallway and made it into the room, two branches spreading out of the main section, a longer and thicker thread that’s almost reached Liz and a narrow stripe making its way to Dean’s position. The walls are covered and the ceiling’s gone, replaced by stalactites of icicles, some small and harmless, others sharp and jagged. “Sam?” Dean asks, the word fogging in the air, and Sam looks at his brother, wincing at the voice breaking like crystals in his mind, _“Pick one, or I will take them both.”_

Liz is huddled in a ball, rocking back and forth, eyes vacant as she rambles on about snow and pines, and Dean’s shaking with cold, eyes boring into Sam when Sam looks at him again. Sam’s trying to think, he really is, and fuck, he’s supposed to be smart, supposed to find a way to save them both, but there’s a contract and no matter how old it is, how unfair it is, he can’t take Karta to court or think of a way to break it, not in this cold, not with the ice creeping steadily toward Dean, not with the knot still whole—this isn’t evil, just business. Signed in blood, written in blood, and if he knew that Liz wasn’t at all related to that village, to anything Latvian, he’d be able to argue, but she _is_ , he saw it in the paths, sees it in Liz even now, and Dean’s shaking him, he just wants this to be _over_ , to have saved them both, but he can’t, _kyrie eleison_. 

“ _She’s yours,_ ” he thinks, and a cat careens around the corner, nails clicking on the ice, black save for a white spot on its forehead in the shape of a snowflake. “ _By the terms of the contract, take her, and leave my brother alone._ ” Karta says, “ _Agreed, yes? Good?_ ” and the ice rushes closer, freezes Liz in place, covers her body, creeping down her nostrils, throat, tunnelling into her ears, sinking in to her pores, and the cat breathes in Liz’s last breath out, then disappears in a flurry of snow. 

It happens so quickly, what comes next. The ice all over the house evaporates in a shrill crackle of sound, taking Liz along with it, and Sam hears, “ _The harvest has been reaped, and the covenant is safe until next time. Your brother has my blessing, Yerik, bargain-maker_ ,” as Sam’s voice rushes back and he chokes on air. Dean’s looking around in something like wary confusion, and then Sam feels, deeps in his bones, the loss of Liz and her resonating gift, like something in him has been broken beyond all repair. His fire erupts, scalds him with need and hunger, rage and betrayal, and Sam whispers, “You’re safe now, Dean,” before his fire overtakes him and he gives into it, into rest.


	7. Music

He feels the sensation of movement, as if he’s on a ship in the middle of the ocean, rocking back and forth, except there’s noise, too, a different sort of friction. The thumping noise sounds rhythmically, one beat out of every four, and he supposes, somehow, that he should know what everything is, but all he feels is loss, bone-deep, and all he knows is need, a hungry, desperate need that feels all-consuming. His mind spreads out, swipes the edge of something hard and glittering, and another noise filters into the heart of this fire he’s made his home, a word that sounds familiar, sounds like one more thing he should know. “Sammy?” He stretches in the flames, stretches his mind and power, and then curls up again, basking in the heat, sleeping, moving timelessly in sync with the flickering fire. 

\--

His mind senses change, a change in something or of some sort, while the rest of him sinks farther into hunger, deeper into need. He drifts, aimless, passes close to minds like his and not like his, minds telling him things that make no sense, things like, _Wake, stop, come back_ , that he ignores. They get insistent, so he swats at them, insignificant annoyances this close to him, and sighs in relief when they leave him alone, though some seem to come back every so often, wearing an echo of a sharp and shimmering edge that doesn’t belong here. That edge, that foreign mind, begs and pleads without words, but he ignores it as well, descending into the centre of a rage so large, so strong, that it calls to the anger in him and breathes him to life, like coaxing an ember to fire, hunger and need and fury and pain mixing together and making him theirs like they were once his. He rests, here in the maelstrom, and lets the litany of pleas wash over him, far above him. 

\--

 _There’s nothing for it,_ he hears; it wakes him. He yawns, fire changing colours, running through the spectrum. _We’ll have to pull him out._ He recognises the timbre of that voice, recognises as well the one that replies, _And Dean? We can’t bring him here._ They haven’t left him alone for an eternity, a second, always here and bothering him, and he’s angry, ready to deal with them once and for all. _He knows what to do_ , and then his patience is broken, and he explodes upwards, a supernova of white-hot and blinding light. 

They are so _small_ next to him, easily surrounded and dwarfed by his power, the power of a blood-baptised child, and that stops him, hovering around them. They aren’t worried, aren’t happy, radiate nothing but resignation tasting like sand and cold ash in the mouth of his flames, and he knows that thought didn’t come from them. The next foreign thought comes quick and hard, then the next, and it’s like a dam’s been broken, it all comes flooding back, and he realises he’s in the psychic plane, wide and sprawling over the others, Missouri and Jeannie in hands of fire, waiting for him to destroy them, accepting it as a price for having woken him. 

He recoils—he’s Sam, Dean’s waiting for him, Liz is _dead_ —and when the rage comes back, the need, he stamps it down, swallows it and locks it up, steps back in horror. _Oh, God_ , he whispers, letting Missouri and Jeannie go, sinking to his knees and pulling the fire back under control, the psychic plane fading to it’s normal grey twilight. _What did I do? What have I done?_

Missouri steps towards him, pausing when Sam scuttles backwards and says, _We understand, Sam. It’s all right, but you need to wake up. Your brother’s worried. He’s here, and driving me and Jeannie crazy._ Sam squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, and Missouri says, _It’s okay, Sam. No one blames you. Please, wake up. For Dean._ Sam laughs, sobs, and says, words muffled by his fire and hesitation, _For Dean._

\--

“Open your eyes, Sammy, come on, please,” he hears and Sam opens his eyes and whispers, “Dean. I’m awake.”


End file.
